I really DON’T have my dining table decorated like this every day but love to do something a little special for Christmas. This tablescape is full of frosty green garland and DIY wooden star place cards.

Holiday Home Tour! A Family Home Full of Frosted Greens

It’s that time of the year! I did my first ever home tour on the blog last year for the holidays and have done a couple since. I’m excited to share how our home and holiday decor has evolved over the past year (so many changes!) and give you a peek into our house. I’m totally in love with how our decor came together this year- each year I get just a couple new things and they can bring a whole new look to the same decorations.

This week, I’ve teamed up with some amazing Canadian bloggers for the Canadian Blogger Christmas Home Tour. 5 Home tours a day all week long and they are all stunning, I promise! You can find all the links down at the bottom of this post. So come on in and check it out ;)

Before I share too much though… let’s have an honesty moment. I was sharing on Instagram stories as I was editing these photos and showing all the photos that had toys under couches that I missed cleaning up and the potty training seat on the floor of the bathroom that I just cropped out. You guys… we have four kids four and under… one of them is a newborn and the other three are hurricanes. Our house NEVER looks this great all at one time. If one room looks amazing, it’s because I’ve moved some of the mess out of that room… and into another one. I’m not a genie. And I’m not above photoshopping out that piece of toast crust I forgot to sweep up.

If you’ve been following along the blog, you’ll have seen our living room, kids shared room and master bedroom all decorated for the holidays in our Hello Holiday posts, so today I’m sharing more details and sources from those spaces but also a couple other spaces of our home. And to be totally honest… decorations keep moving around our home. Things have changed in here even since we’ve taken these photos. So if it looks like I have two of the same vase… it’s probably just that I’ve moved it and forgotten that I had it somewhere else for photos. It’s too much fun to change things up.

And speaking of changing things up… over the past four years, our decor has changed entirely. From glass to everything but.

95% of what we have in here is totally kid friendly.

Because I just can’t deal with the stress of a ‘hands off’ Christmas… if you manage glass decor with little ones, please send all your tips? And the few things that are glass or precious are well out of reach. But even still, they get broken. That deer head (actually a game) has been broken 3 times… superglue is our friend around here. Speaking of… can you tell which deer on the mantle has been glued together? But I wouldn’t trade the little people for fancy glass ornaments. Have you seen how cute they are?

Overall… our style hasn’t really changed, but I do feel like it’s a bit more pulled together than last year. We still have tons of greenery… still love the black and white… but this year we added some more frosted garlands and wreaths (one of these days, I’ll get a flocked Christmas tree, but not this year. #wishlist). Last year I had snagged some flocked looking pine picks to fill out our Christmas tree and add some frosted feels. I put those in the tree again and swapped out the black felt garland I’d made for this birch paper ribbon. I got this through a wholesale retailer and SO WISH I would have gotten more of it because I can’t get anymore now. I’m obsessed with it! If anyone sees this stuff anywhere… please tell me?

Other than that, most of our ornaments are either handmade or NOT breakable. DIY wooden stars, acrylic instead of glass, and metal jingle bells mostly. The kids and I will probably make some paper snowflakes to add to the tree over the month. It’s one of their advent activities (totally NOT shown, it’s in the hallway which has zero light… but I shared it here on Instagram).

One of the other changes I made for the holidays… and one that’s going to stay… is the art in our living room. Swapping out the blue painting (which I still haven’t shared the DIY for… you can spy it in our spring home tour) I’d made for above the mantle for this handlettered one made such a huge difference in how much I love this space! It totally works with the black and white thing we’ve got going on but is so much more textural than our old constellation painting in the space.

Besides greenery… our home is also full of handlettered products from my shop! I ordered almost everything from my holiday line just to test it out and am pretty much obsessed. That FaLaLa gold foil print on the mantle, all those handlettered pillows (SO DARN SOFT!), mugs and the tea towel in the kitchen and that banner in the kids room… all from that collection. It’s amazing how well your holiday decor can fit your style when you make them yourself ;)

Okay, another kid story. See that Falalalala wooden banner in the wreath? I totally love that thing, it’s a DIY from last year. But my kids got a hold of it and now it has a bite mark. Teeth indents and everything- and a nice smudge because the ink is water soluble. Please tell me I’m not the only mom out there who just sighs and puts their kid-ified decorations up anyways?

Oh, and another thing we’ve changed since taking these photos? My desk was just too cramped there with the tree up. We’ve moved it into the nursery for now (since babe is still in our bedroom for a couple months!). But it sure was fun to style it for the holidays. I’m pretty sure that letterboard could be in every single one of these vignettes and I wouldn’t even be bothered by it. They came out with some different shapes and colours and I kind of want to get one for every room. But Shane totally wouldn’t be on board ;)

Let’s move on out of the living room, shall we?

I say this every home tour… but vases full of branches or seasonal foliage is my very very favourite way to change up decor in rooms. Like the entryway… or bathroom… or kitchen… where you don’t really need ‘decorations’ per say. I’m not one to have things over every surface (hello… hurricanes live here) so these are easy ways to switch it up PLUS it means NO storage of off season decor. And can I just say how amazing it is to have a bathroom that is beautiful enough to include in a home tour!? It feels so good to have that space FINISHED! You can see the whole makeover here.

So the dining room and kitchen didn’t get much this year. I was looking back over my home tour from last year and realized I totally need to pull out my minimal white branch wreath for over the map again! I really love it there and can’t believe I’d forgotten about it. But since it’s still the beginning of December, I still have time to put it out and enjoy it all month long.

And although the dining room is pretty undecorated in these photos (every day life!)… I decked it out for a tablescape post coming up later this week!

For the first time ever we decorated our bedrooms for Christmas too! They’re so cheerful, I’ll definitely be decorating them from now on.

The kids room was so much fun to decorate. We just finished their room makeover with the dark green walls and neutral bedspreads… and that totally plays well with holiday decor. We kept it kid friendly with a tiny tree and felt decorations. That thing has been decorated and redecorated every day. They’ve also been crafting paper ornaments for it. Other than the tree? We have a pom pom wreath (which I’ve since moved to the inside of the entry!), our handlettered lightbox, and nutcrackers galore. Those have also been moved though… to the stairs along with all their other friends. We’ve got a bit of a collection over here. Lastly… pillows!

The kids wanted some holiday pillows of their own- they kept taking my living room ones when we first got them so I sat down with them and let them pick out a penguin each and made a little holiday throw pillow for each of their beds. I’m not writing a post on it, but I used these penguin illustrations and heat transfer vinyl cut with my Cricut.

Side note… my kids are almost always around when I’m taking photos. And this home tour was no different. Notice all the crinkles in their beds? They just hid in the part of the room I wasn’t photographing, hopping around from bed to bed to be out of the shots (wrinkling the covers, you know) and directing me not to forget to photograph ‘Sparkle’ the unicorn or the tiny nutcracker.

I mentioned this when I shared some shots of our bedroom a couple weeks ago… but it’s become one of my very favourite spaces in our home! I love that moulding wall we installed and our bed… and that macrame. *sigh* it’s such a cozy space now. Plus I’m totally in love with our new bedding- it’s from Quilts Etc. and I’ll be sharing more about it (and the bedroom in general… not holiday!) in the new year but thought I’d sneak that in because it’s my favourite bedding I’ve ever had!

Alright, friends… I’m going to leave it at that because this tour got out of hand long! I got a bit carried away… maybe. I used to think it was overkill to do a holiday tour of each room… but after writing this I totally understand. I thought about doing a ‘shop this post’ set of links at the bottom (that’s a good 50% of emails/comments I answer!) but that would be pretty much every item in my house. If I’d shared just ONE room though? See! It makes good sense ;)

I so hope you enjoyed this peek into our home and hope that you hop around and check out all the other lovely home tours in the series! 5 bloggers will be sharing their spaces each day this week so you definitely won’t be short of inspiration! Grab all the links below:

Comments

Everything looks beautiful! I love that you decorated the kids’ room. The penguin pillows are adorable. My daughter wants me to devote some time to helping her decorate her bedroom for Christmas so I have to get on that! I have to say almost every glass ornament we’ve had over the years has been broken, but often it was me dropping them. I just don’t find them practical. And the teeth marks, haha. I have teens now but the dogs occasionally get their teeth on stuff. Perfection is overrated as they say. ;)

I LOVE your home and your honesty. It’s important to remember that nobody is perfect, even if it seems that way on a home tour. I have photoshopped crumbs off my floor in the past and I’d do it again! Your place is gorgeous. There are too many things I love to even begin listing my favourite bits.

Oh Colleen I love your style and how you exude relaxation, how you laugh off crumbs and toys under furniture, like it’s no big D, cause it’s not a big deal, not in the grand scheme of things. Your beautiful home reflects your calm and I adore both! xo You are one madly talented person and I love seeing all the good that is coming your way! <3

Colleen!!! SO FANTASTIC! I love your living room and how that whole space flows together so beautifully. The kid’s in the bedroom – so sweet! Hope the sleeping is going well:) I just wish I could come by and hang out in your beautiful Christmas living room and cuddle your sweet little baby! Merry Christmas, friend!

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